Henry Kissinger despairingly told Richard Nixon, “Paks are up the creek.” The president replied, “The Indians have screwed us.” After the failure of the Washington summit, the Nixon administration fully expected war.1
Indira Gandhi, despairing of any political deal in Pakistan, reportedly ordered a military solution. Indian troops stepped up their border skirmishes with the Pakistanis, often sparked by India’s sponsorship of the Bengali insurgents. When the Mukti Bahini fought against Pakistani troops, the Pakistani soldiers would sometimes wind up in hot pursuit back across the Indian border—resulting in clashes with the Indian troops at the frontier. India, increasingly open about crossing onto Pakistani soil, sent troops into Pakistani territory in strength on two separate occasions. India complained that Pakistan was firing shells and bullets into Indian territory.2
Although these clashes were too big to hide, Gandhi’s government was prickly about its troops being caught on the wrong side of the border. On November 7, Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times trekked out to the Indian border with East Pakistan. The next day, he filed a front-page story reporting that Indian troops had ventured into East Pakistan to take out Pakistani guns that had been lobbing artillery into a town in India. Schanberg’s article flew in the face of India’s official line that its troops had “strict orders” not to cross the border, even when provoked. When they read the Times story, both Haksar and Gandhi hit the roof. Haksar reprimanded the defense ministry, saying that Gandhi wanted a thorough investigation into leaks to Schanberg.3
India’s defense secretary hauled Schanberg in to protest a story that seemed perfectly accurate. Schanberg politely stood his ground and, according to an Indian account, deployed a traditional dodge of the foreign correspondent: blaming nitwit editors back home for slanting the story. He effectively boxed in the Indians by purporting not to see the harm in what they were doing. But he said that he could not believe the official claim that Indian troops were under instructions not to cross the border. The prime minister gave Indian officials fresh orders to hold their tongues.4
Worried that the State Department was sending mixed signals, Nixon ordered Kissinger to swiftly get word to China that the United States was unfaltering in support of Pakistan. Kissinger promised to do so, planning to use the Paris channel.5
But if the United States’ commitment to Pakistan was unwavering, China’s seemed wobbly. When Pakistan sent Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to Beijing to firm up Chinese support, Indian intelligence suggested that Bhutto had gotten a “frosty” reception in Beijing, with the Chinese urging him to avoid war. Despite Bhutto’s public claims that China had promised its support if India attacked, this at best seemed to mean arms and ammunition, not the kind of direct intervention that Nixon and Kissinger were hoping for. The CIA reckoned that there was little chance that China would do much to bail Pakistan out in a war.6
After the face-off with Gandhi at the White House, Kissinger was freshly energized in his anger against India. Her fierce Oval Office condemnations of Pakistan had stuck with him, and he repeatedly brought them up: “She spent most of her time telling him [Nixon] that Baluchistan should never have been made a part of Pakistan.” Thus he expected India to rip away East Pakistan, driving West Pakistan to collapse, in order to “settle the Pakistan problem once and for all.” Although he thought India would attack, he also saw the desperate logic of a Pakistani first strike: “If they will lose East Pakistan politically anyhow, why not lose in a war?”7
Gandhi was under tremendous public pressure, which only intensified as the Indian Parliament reconvened for its winter session—“thirsting for blood,” as Kissinger later wrote. Returning from Washington, she denounced “the thinly disguised legalistic formulation that it was merely an internal affair of Pakistan,” and cheered on the Mukti Bahini’s “heroic struggle … in defence of the most elementary democratic rights and liberties.” Although she urged Nixon to commit “the vast prestige of the United States” to finding a political deal with Mujib, there was no hope that any such thing was going to happen.8
“I wish we could do more!” Nixon told Pakistan’s foreign secretary in an Oval Office meeting. “I wish we could do more, believe me.” Here Nixon, for the first time in eight months of killing, personally beseeched a Pakistani official to find “political solutions” rather than solve a problem by force. But it was unclear if the president meant Pakistan cutting a deal with the Bengali nationalists, or defusing the military standoff between India and Pakistan.9
Soon after the failure of the summit, the Nixon administration began preparations for some U.S. military saber rattling—a customary part of their playbook. Admiral John McCain Jr., the commander in chief of the Pacific Command, drew up plans to pull an aircraft carrier task group away from providing tactical air support in Vietnam and sail it into the Bay of Bengal. The Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly agreed, as the White House staff briefed Kissinger about the military’s secret planning.10
Nixon and Kissinger had bet everything on Yahya, but they realized that he was being swept away by events. Back in August, while planning the White House’s calendar of upcoming summits for December, H. R. Haldeman had asked if Yahya was still on the schedule. “No,” said Nixon, after an awkward pause. Kissinger added softly, after another painful interval, “I don’t think he’ll be in office by then.”11
Soon after the Gandhi summit, the White House staff warned Kissinger that an isolated Yahya was no longer calling the shots with his own military. He had no real idea what was happening in East Pakistan, where the army had nearly complete control. Yahya might listen to U.S. suggestions, but the army did not implement them. Although Nixon was still loyally calling Yahya “a good friend to me,” Kissinger starkly warned the president that the Pakistani leader was on his way out. At the same time, Kissinger told Nixon of ongoing “terror raids” and noted, “Reprisal operations continue to focus against Hindus.”12
Much of this grim news to Nixon should have been familiar from the reporting by U.S. officials in Dacca. It had long been clear that there was no real civilian government in East Pakistan; that the civil war was raging out of control; that Yahya’s political concessions were too little to matter; that Hindus were still being singled out for persecution; that the Bengalis were only getting angrier at their overlords in West Pakistan; and that the refugees would not go home. Now these unpleasant facts were sinking in for Nixon and Kissinger. It was too late.
Indian troops were allowed to go ten miles into East Pakistan—instructions that Indian officers quickly used to bolster their offensive posture, capturing substantial areas and wiping out Pakistan army posts. On the night of November 21–22, there was a frightening escalation, culminating in the first air battle of the crisis.13
India and Pakistan accused each other of starting this border clash, though Major General Jacob-Farj-Rafael Jacob later conceded that India had moved first. He recalled that on November 20 an Indian infantry division launched a preliminary attack around Boyra, in East Pakistan near the Indian border. Then the Pakistan Air Force struck back, losing three Sabre jets in the process. The Pakistan army’s U.S.-made M-24 Chaffee light tanks made a disastrous thrust over open ground—it reminded Jacob of the charge of the Light Brigade—into concentrated fire from Indian tanks and recoilless guns. In the combat, Pakistan lost thirteen or fourteen tanks and many men. Then the Pakistani troops crossed into India and struck at several Indian villages. India claimed that Pakistani shelling wounded several Indians.14
But in public, India stuck to a version blaming Pakistan for attacking. In this less embarrassing account, the trouble began when a Pakistani infantry brigade, fortified by tanks, artillery, and air support, attacked a Mukti Bahini base in the Boyra area, in East Pakistan, about five miles from the Indian border. India, admitting that it had crossed into Pakistan’s territory, claimed it had no choice. Haksar argued that India had remained restrained despite Pakistan’s repeated violations of Indian airspace and shelling of Indian territory bordering East Pakistan. In Haksar’s retelling, India then struck at Boyra to take out Pakistani tanks and guns; the next day, three Pakistani Sabre jets crossed into Indian airspace and were shot down. India captured two pilots who had bailed out over Indian soil.15
The battle suited India’s strategic purposes. General Jacob later confessed that the air battle had been controlled from his command at Fort William in Calcutta. D. P. Dhar, one of the most bellicose officials in India’s ruling circles, welcomed war but wanted to be sure that, when it came, it detonated out of the civil war in East Pakistan. India, he wrote, would need to be “able to furnish the elaborate pretext” that India was helping with a Bengali “war of liberation.”16
Just as important, this clash was right on schedule for India. According to Jacob, when Indira Gandhi first asked the army to march into East Pakistan back in April, he had told her that the earliest they would be ready for war was November 15. General Sam Manekshaw, on his own account, had wanted six months to prepare. When November 15 came, Jacob privately wrote to another general, “In the East conditions are ripe for a swift offensive.” It was the season for war: the monsoons were over; the army had had time to train; and wintry weather in the Himalayas would foil any Chinese troops.17
That morning at the White House, Kissinger burst into Haldeman’s office saying that India had attacked Pakistan. Relying only on Pakistani radio broadcasts, unsure of what was really going on, Kissinger sounded the alarm to Nixon. There was, he told the president by telephone, a big encroachment taking place, “heavily backed by the Indians.” Nixon stormed that he wanted Kissinger to “lay it out hard” that all aid would be stopped to both India and Pakistan, which would “hurt the Indians more.”18
The Pakistanis, Kissinger said, were “saying it’s war.” Nixon said, “And the Indians say it isn’t.” Kissinger, still without the facts, insisted, “It’s a naked case of aggression, Mr. President.” Nixon sulkily pointed out that John Connally, the Treasury secretary, had told him that “the Indians have been kicking us in the ass for twenty-five years.” Kissinger said that they did not want an Indian assault that made Pakistan disintegrate. He suggested that if there were debates at the United Nations Security Council, the United States did not have to go as far as China—whose delegation spoke in wild Cultural Revolution polemics—in condemning India. Nixon exploded: “I want to go damn near as far! You understand? I don’t like the Indians.”19
The next day, Kissinger said, “India is outrageous.” India’s actions, he asserted, were part of a Soviet plan to humiliate the United States. While calling the Indians “those sons of bitches,” Kissinger prepared a high-minded stance against aggression for a press briefing: “ ‘It is against the Charter of the United Nations, it’s against the principles of this country,’ and make them attack us on that ground.” But when privately told that a discussion at the United Nations was the only way forward, Kissinger snapped, “Let’s not kid ourselves—that means Pakistan will get raped.”20
After the battle at Boyra, General Manekshaw quietly ordered the Indian army to launch new and increasingly brazen attacks into Pakistani territory. Although the CIA argued that this was a limited operation, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was convinced that Indian troops were involved. “There is no way guerrillas could get tanks and aircraft and be operating in brigade formation,” Kissinger said. “We can play this charade only so long. What kind of a world is it where countries can claim these are guerrilla actions?” Without evidence, he was sure that India had attacked with regular units inside East Pakistan’s borders. Kissinger decided that India had long been planning this attack. He seemed to compare India’s actions to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Lithuania in 1941: “You have 12 planes against 200. It’s the Germans claiming they were attacked by the Lithuanians.”21
Pakistan declared a state of emergency, and Yahya drunkenly told a New Yorker reporter that he expected to be at war within ten days. When a State Department official suggested that this might be a good time for Yahya to cut a deal with Mujib before it was too late, Kissinger—although indifferent to the thought of an independent Bangladesh (“We don’t give a damn”)—shot back, “So, India having attacked Pakistan, the logical conclusion is that we should squeeze Yahya to talk to Mujib. What Indian troops can’t achieve, we should achieve for them.” He fumed, “If the situation were reversed and Pakistani troops were moving into India, the New York Times, Washington Post and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would be committing mass hara-kari, and there would be marches on Washington.”22
By chance, Kissinger was scheduled for his first secret meeting in New York with Chinese diplomats the day after the Boyra battle. Late at night, Kissinger—along with George Bush, Alexander Haig, and Winston Lord—snuck into a seedy CIA safe house in an old brownstone on Manhattan’s East Side to meet a Chinese delegation led by Huang Hua, the new ambassador at the United Nations. “For these purposes, Mr. Bush works directly for me,” Kissinger conspiratorially told the Chinese. “No one else in the Government except the people in this room knew about this channel.” Kissinger and Haig gave a military briefing, accusing Indian troops of attacking near Jessore and Chittagong—and tantalizingly suggesting that India had left its northern border with China exposed. “This violates every security rule,” said Kissinger, about his sharing of U.S. intelligence. They coordinated the Chinese and U.S. positions for United Nations Security Council debates. Demonstrating U.S. support for Pakistan, Kissinger told Huang that India had no right to use military force to relieve the pressure caused by the refugees. Soon after, Kissinger fretted about what China would think “if the friend of the United States and China in the subcontinent gets raped without any resistance.”23
The battle at Boyra was still something less than war. Indira Gandhi had full-scale invasion plans, but she did not launch them. Nor did Pakistan, which dithered in its response. While Kissinger was convinced this was clear Indian aggression, Nixon was at first skeptical about whether the clash really meant the start of war: a jet fight, he said, “doesn’t mean that there’s a damn war going on.”24
But Kissinger pressed him: “the guerrillas have been operating with brigade strength with artillery support and air support and tanks.” Won over, Nixon said, “It’s like North Vietnam still denying they are in South Vietnam.” He added, “They want Pakistan to disintegrate.” Thus he instructed Kissinger to tilt their policy toward Pakistan wherever they could. Kissinger, ratcheting up, said that India aimed at regional domination.
Although Nixon knew that India would win a war, his support for Yahya did not waver. “He’ll be demolished,” the president said. “Pakistan eventually will disintegrate.” Even now, at the eleventh hour, he never faltered in his sentimental attachment to Yahya. Rather than merely defending the Pakistani strongman as a tainted but necessary partner, Nixon repeatedly vouched for his friend’s integrity. “Yahya is a thoroughly decent and reasonable man,” he said. “Not always smart politically, but he’s a decent man.”
Nixon insisted that he bore no responsibility for the situation that he had allowed Yahya to unleash back in March. He did not want to “take the heat for a miserable war that we had nothing do with.” Kissinger bucked him up, saying that if they had made any mistake, it was being too hard on Pakistan. Nixon said, “We just got to get it across to the American people that we cannot be responsible for every goddamn war in the world.… We are not responsible for this war.” This battle, the refugees, Pakistan’s convulsions: “we couldn’t avoid that, could we?”25
Sydney Schanberg set out from Calcutta to prove that India was forging into Pakistani territory in several places. “The Indian army was making interventions that none of us are allowed to see,” he remembers. India was still officially denying that any of its troops had crossed the border; it had closed off the frontline areas to the press, and he was definitely not allowed to go to Boyra. But the New York Times reporter found a way. Each time he came to a checkpoint, he bluffed his way past by telling the Indian soldiers that he did not want to go to the border, he just wanted to talk to their lieutenant. This ruse got him to a staging area a few miles from the border, which was buzzing with military activity. In under two hours, he saw hundreds of troops stream past, heading for the border, on truck convoys that kicked up red dust. The soldiers had automatic weapons and full ammunition packs. There were trucks massing, covered with camouflage netting and loaded with ammunition. “They had everything from tanks and desks, office supplies,” he says. “You knew they were going inside.”
In the distance, he could hear artillery fire. The Indians stopped him. Schanberg found a group of officers drinking beer, and tried an old reporter’s trick. Rather than asking if they were inside East Pakistan, he simply assumed that they were. He told a major, “You must be kicking the bejesus out of the Pakistan army.” The Indian officer said yes, they were all the way to Jessore. Schanberg wrote it all down. He got his scoop plastered on the front page of the New York Times.26
Gandhi was finally forced to admit for the first time that Indian troops had gone into East Pakistan, although India claimed it was self-defense. At a raucous rally in Calcutta, India’s defense minister announced that its troops had permission to go as far into Pakistan as the range of Pakistani artillery, meaning several miles. At that event, a Congress party speaker cried, “India will break Pakistan to pieces.” Another declared, “We will make shoes out of Yahya’s skin.” In retaliation for Schanberg’s story, the West Bengal government canceled his border permit. Schanberg says that an Indian cabinet minister told him years later that they had debated throwing him out of the country.27
Nixon and Kissinger both wanted to slash all military aid to India. But Kissinger soon decided it was better to block the most crucial 70 percent of U.S. arms deals, saving the remainder in case of further misdeeds. As Kissinger told Nixon, they would cut off some $17 million of military supply, grounding India’s C-119 military transport planes, and stopping all ammunition.28
Kenneth Keating, the U.S. ambassador in Delhi, was sent over to the Indian foreign ministry to break the bad news on December 2. (“He may start weeping all over them,” Kissinger said.) The Indian defense ministry privately pointed out that it could have been worse, but the Indian government was angered, and the public was shocked. Nixon also ended funding for a food program and stopped a loan, amounting to roughly $100 million.29
Gandhi was coldly determined. Shrugging off United Nations mediation, she denounced the ongoing “military repression and denial of basic human rights in East Bengal.” Keating found her more grim than he had ever seen her. She bluntly refused to pull back her troops to ease the pressure on Yahya: “we are not in a position to make this easier for him.” She did not see how she could tell Indians to keep waiting: “I can’t hold it.”30
On December 2, Pakistan’s ambassador told Kissinger that Yahya “wants to take further actions.”31